sweet tea. -tkam

bathroom floors.

-Daisy's pov-

I found myself in the restaurant bathroom choking back tears while I tried also to preserve my mascara.
     The date has only been going on for a half hour at best, but I felt like utter shit. The night has already been filled by only sly jabs at me, and comments about women and how much they do wrong.
      Yet I think I'm expected to find the woman hating jokes funny, so I've learned to hide the pain and fake a laugh, be and if I don't laugh at those jokes, I'm just as unlikable to him as the women he speaks of.
      But I can't seem to understand, I don't think those women are unlikable at all.
     The women he jokes of, wearing heavy makeup, bouncing between men, isn't that what you're supposed to do? Men expect me to always put out for them and dress up for them, logically, don't they expect that if I always do put out and dress up for men I just met? That they wouldn't be the only ones?
      They call the other women whores for doing what they want me to do for them....for other men. And I can't seem to understand, maybe something is wrong with me.
     By my understanding...he would call me a slut for doing exactly what I did, and what he wanted me to do...if it had been with any other man. I sat in the bathroom as I tried to hold back tears.
     I wished I was just normal, and maybe then it wouldn't all hurt my feelings. He did say it was jokes...and the things he's commented about me are true, and he's right, he is just letting me know the obvious.
      It's my fault for being hurt by that. I sought refuge in the bathroom so I could have a moment to collect myself again and veer away the tears, in hopes that I might return to him less sensitive, and less emotional.
     I had gained my freedom, but somehow I still felt trapped. So there I was, crying silently against the wall in a bathroom, before the date had even ended.
     Black streams of tears streaked my cheeks, and I sniffled, rubbing the mascara residue from my cheeks.
    I felt the cold tile on my hands and through my dress, and suddenly it was as if the cool of the tile gripped my heart.

-flashback (1933: age-25)
-3rd pov-

Daisys body quivered from how hard she tried to keep her crying silent, she leaned her body against the wall.
     Her legs gave out in defeat, and she slid onto the cool tile. She laid there pitifully, sobbing on the bathroom floor. It was her only place to go at the moment. The only way to avoid him for at least a few minutes.
     She was too weak and defeated to lift her face off the bathroom floor, too broken to care about germs. She hardly had the will to care about breathing, it was all becoming too much for her, and it was a chore just to
Survive another day.
      But she never found rest, never got peace of mind. So like she did every night. She cried on the cold bathroom floors, sacrificing her dignity for a moment away from him.

-end of flashback, daisy pov-

I remembered how I hid in the bathroom from Elton, and I felt sick when I noticed that same feeling all over again, a pitiful feeling of being at my lowest.
     sobbing on a bathroom floor, but unsure if the horrible scene was still better than facing the man I cried for.
     I was tired, so, so tired. Tired of having to feel this way for love, for men. I knew I had to push through, and be strong.
     But I didn't want to be strong, and I hated the fact that I had to always put up with something. Why did a date require me to push past my limits? Why was it expected for me to just keep going?
     Why must I carry this weight? As I cleaned my makeup up in the mirror I tried to keep myself from crying all over again.
     I wanted to be done with all these feelings, all these sacrifices, all the pains of womanhood.
     But I mustn't dare show my exhaustion with the situation, for if I did it might make a man uncomfortable, and my job...well.
     As a woman, my job has always been to coddle and cater to men I don't know, to always take them into consideration.
     I was meant to put a stranger above my own needs just because they are a man. I looked at my reflection, and tried to give myself a smile. My trauma, I suppose, made me stronger.
     More helpful? Understanding? Emotionally mature? And I could look at myself and say "she can handle it". But as I saw my eyes twinkle with tears, that woman I saw in the mirror disappeared, and in her place stood a little girl.
      A little girl with tears in her eyes, wondering what she did wrong. All she ever wanted was to make it right, even when she wasn't wrong. She just wanted love.
      I couldn't look at her and say she could take it. I couldn't justify what happened to her in a million years. And it broke my heart to know that this is what her story has come to.
   My trauma made me stronger. But I didn't need to be stronger, I was 5.